


Leading Role in a Cage

by dropout_ninja



Series: Echoes [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Aliens, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Anti-Hero, Crapsack World, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Dystopia, F/M, Fantasy, Friendship??, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Language, Magic, Murder, Not Beta Read, Origin Story, Political Alliances, Sequel, Technology, Urban Fantasy, Vampirism, Weird Atypical Cyberpunkesque Vampirism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29984793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropout_ninja/pseuds/dropout_ninja
Summary: Before he was handed the keys to a collapsing kingdom by one Vida Mehr, Lucas had his own plans to climb as many ranks as he could.  The sacrifices made along the way couldn't have mattered more than taking upper echelon positions...could they?In the aftermath of their alliance, Lucas wonders what he will need to do to both keep from stepping into his former commander's footsteps and keep his own medical condition from damaging the progress this truce has made.
Series: Echoes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2205621
Kudos: 2





	Leading Role in a Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Uncomfortably Numb  
> CW for non-consensual implications, specifically in being coerced into activities without being informed of full risks.  
> Don't expect this to make any technological or magical sense  
> (The title is a reference to the Pink Floyd song 'wish you were here', the rights of which go to them and not me)

The day things upturned had been harshly sunny and blisteringly hot.

Lucas wondered, in hindsight, why it could not have been stormy and dark. Why there could not have been more warnings, more chances to back away in unease. 

At the time, he'd merely been sent to help recover someone who had reached out to the faction. A single person would hardly have gained Eyler's attention under most circumstances, even when they were being offered in exchange for rare supplies.

The Axai were not most circumstances.

Their team had brought the woman back from the wastelands the Axai had last pinged them from. She'd been on the ground by the time their skiff reached her and sunburns and dehydration had kept her out of the count the entire drive back to the Eyler's territory. Her clothing was alien, her arms lined with surface level cracks, her hair long (he rarely saw hair grown out, not when so much had to be shaved for implants and so much water was needed to keep hair cleaned; Eyler was one of the few to display any and it was more of a status symbol than anything else). It'd been fascinating. Everything about her was.

She'd come out from the Axai, though she was a human rather than one of those creatures. Curiosity had propelled him nearer when the others were treating her. There was a sense of adventure to getting close to an Axai experiment and he was irresistibly curious about experiencing that adventure. Curiosity and revulsion. Not for her, but for the damage and the reality that the Axai had dealt it all. There was nothing to do to make her feel better. Was there? Lucas couldn't know. He could look, though. 

He waited outside the hospital stall they'd thrown her into. Waited until he was told that the inhabitant beyond the curtain had woken up, heard she had a visitor, and decided to let him in.

Lucas went into that stall with a straight back and no clear reasoning to explain his presence with.

But as it turned out, the human didn't care that he was unsure. She was confused too. Confused at being away from the Axai. Confused at her medical surroundings. Alright with being confused. She smiled at him, he smiled at her; neither knowing what was happening, but willing to try to say a few words to make the pain of confusion go numb for a bit.

* * *

Her name was Rusa Wilson. Lucas had told her that it wasn't a type of name he'd heard before. She'd laughed, said everything about her was unique. 

Funny, then.

He didn't know then how serious she was being, so why wouldn't he laugh alongside her?

Eyler liked Rusa. They held their meetings and occasionally Lucas would cross paths with Rusa when he was heading to one office or other and she was leaving Eyler's. 

At this time, Lucas was an administrator. Not the highest of them, but he had a good amount of power in his job. It was a stepping point. Administration for one small sector one day, administration for it all the next. He wasn't going to rush it along and had no plans to ever try to take Eyler's spot, but he wanted to climb up further than his current rank. Rusa had a different view of things. She told him that ambition wasn't her strong suit. That fitting into some high command rank wasn't her style.

By now, Rusa had a home. It was set out by a lake (or the basin where a lake would have been, if it wasn't dried and the bottom portion filled only with a gunk inviting no one to drink) a good couple of miles away from Eyler's capital city. Lucas had spent more time there than he'd planned to when first meeting the woman but he couldn't have expected they'd hit it off as well as they had. The road to her cabin was memorized by now and taken subconsciously. The ugly basin of a lake was walked past without note. He'd carry in his bag of meals to hand off to her and she'd squeeze him in embrace when thanking, the movement and words all purposefully over exaggerated and made to be laughed over. 

Once, when dishing out the takeout he'd pieced together to bring her for the week, Lucas had asked about the topic of careers. This was how he'd learned first she didn't want to steal his job or Eyler's or anyone's, really.

 _You just don't want that powerful a position?_ he'd asked, thinking it sounded like a decent guess. Responsibility over administration and the people that entailed wasn't exactly what everyone was after. 

_Oh, no, babe,_ she'd laughed (she did that a lot, he found; brought her head back, let her mouth open wide in mirth, flashed all the teeth on display). _I've got no issue holding power over others. I just don't like the restraints of all those little jobs your boss has set up._

Not wild enough. Not untamed. Too restrictive.

And so much more to add to that with what he knew in hindsight.

So once, when crossing paths, he'd stretched out to tap her passing arm. Ask her for a pause. Ask her why, if she didn't want anything Eyler had to offer, why she visited the capital tower so often.

Rusa told him that he wasn't quite understanding the position she was in here. She'd been handed over by the Axai and Eyler had accepted that trade because of what she had to offer in return: whatever the Axai had 'gifted' her with. 

Lucas had let himself forget that there was anything to start with. She seemed human. Whatever more there was, it wasn't surface level obvious.

She had never struck him as trying to hide anything. She seemed open and honest and affable about any topic. 

And he had to wonder, since her presentation let him think she was just as average a human as he despite knowing better, what else she could be presenting as in his mind that was divorced from reality.

* * *

When she had pinged his implants to give her telepathic call asking him over, Lucas thought nothing of it. 

When he arrived, walked past the basin, went past the lobby towards the interior-most room, it was a path he'd taken plenty of times before. 

When Rusa had sat him down and taken her own seat on the chair's arm, legs blocking his in and one arm locked over his shoulders, he'd not considered such a pose was meant to trap him. 

Not at first.

Her free arm came down in front of him. Fingers tapped their way up his chest. Tapped up his neck. Took his chin and pointed it towards her smile. 

Her head tilted down until hair was brushing against his face.

Her lips were set in a smile but peeling, slightly, as though a larger grin wanted to break out.

"I want to show you something," she'd murmured. 

Perhaps Lucas had considered this would be going a different direction. He heard the comment and made no move. Waited. Patient. Unconcerned. Eager, to be honest.

The hand left his face so that its arm could retreat enough that she could roll back the sleeve and bare her forearm. It was pale. Flesh. Until it wasn't.

The skin cracked in straight, even lines. Plates disguised as skin slid back under into sheathes. Left instead was gray metal. 

"Those-...I've never seen implants like those," Lucas said. He tried to brush the metal with his own fingers. The various nubs on the gray were as curious to him just as much as their purpose and build was mysterious. Rusa pushed against his shoulders harder and ceased his movement.

"You wouldn't have."

The nubs split as petals and sphinctered open. Wires spilled out. Or no- not wires. Too large to be wires. They were tubes and Rusa finally sat up just enough to take hold of them with her other hand. Pull them out and keep a hold of them and there were too many, it was unsettling. 

Then she was taking his arm and pinching it against the arm of the chair. Lucas asked why. He asked again. He grew impatient at being ignored. An impatience born of both uneasy fear and of a frustration built out of someone he considered a friend ignoring his question repeatedly. 

One of the tubes was positioned near the crook of his arm. Rusa was massaging at its end, slowly pushing a point from its rubbery hold. 

When she pushed it in and then pulled the needle free, leaving behind a catheter pumping blood from his veins to the tube, Lucas felt tired of waiting for explanation. But making a move to pull it free and stand received a snarl in return. 

"Hold still-" Rusa pushed him to the chair again. Protests were ignored. Lucas felt she must have had a desperate enough reason to ignore them so thoroughly and decided to wait this out rather than shoving her off to leave. 

And when she did the same the week after, he decided the same.

And again.

Until he no longer cared if she was desperate, no longer cared about the reasons she gave him, no longer cared to have her sitting above him keeping him still while siphoning away blood for herself. It felt frustrating, dirty, explanation or not, to do so; not because of her need to steal his lifeblood, but because of how she assumed he was permitting it every time. 

Or, worse, not assuming anything because she just didn't care about permission one way or the other. 

* * *

It was a result of the Axai. Rusa had told him all about it after the first time was finished. They'd pulled her apart, pieced her together again. Implants were one thing. They'd left hers untouched, other than blocking them to keep her from pinging at anyone and everyone near for help. They hadn't cared about the human technology and its human magic. What they wanted was a way to transfer their own to a human. To see if it was possible. Telepathy had been achieved by human means. Could they engineer the technology to make a human that could do more than mere telepathy?

The Axai's magic was bloodborne. Rusa said they'd pumped her full of theirs time after time, carefully, in isolation, keeping her body from killing itself at the unnatural materials each time. Tried to find a way to make her sensitive to the energy that could be found there.

Rusa said they succeeded. Somewhat, at least.

The energy they wanted her capable of tapping into wasn't truly unique to Axai blood. If they handed her a human and hooked them together, she showed a reaction to the sapping of magic there as well. It delighted them. It ruined her.

She said she couldn't live without it anymore. That her own bloodborne energies burned out so fast she had to take from a donor. That Eyler knew and provided her with what he could.

Lucas himself was hardly a donor handed over by Eyler. He couldn't have been. Not without Eyler having explained this to him before, told him that this was happening. Rusa agreed. Said he was her choice. Her special choice. He'd been the first to get her back on her feet when she'd left the Axai, so she liked him best, chose him. He wondered where his choice in the matter was.

Still, it was harmless. Physically. Being at her beck and call whenever she wanted to siphon was another subject.

* * *

Lucas waited outside while Rusa entered the apartment. Planned to wait the full time. Rusa needed living blood, straight from a human host. If it had been outside the body for more than a few seconds, then whatever energy she needed from it withered out. Stored blood was out then. Donor packets, useless. Blood for bloods sake had no point. She was siphoning magic, something mystic, something unexplained to him because she herself didn't understand it. The Axai did but they hardly shared their secrets with humanity. 

She'd taken to asking him to go with her when she _needed_ it. Eyler must have been turning a blind eye. Reports of corpses left behind in the particular ways Rusa would leave them were hardly inconspicuous or mysterious. He would recognize it was her if he heard of these deaths. Yet he did nothing about it. Rusa only raided lowlifes. Homeless. The 'unimportant' to Eyler.

She didn't even need to kill them. Her excuse was that she couldn't allow news or stories to spread. Couldn't let anyone be telling stories about a person who'd dry them for the energy inside so that she herself wouldn't wither. It'd make her life harder, she said. Or get back to Eyler, which he knew was a moot point. It'd scare people. Or make them look at her in disgust. She preferred to have them look at her in naivety. Like he had. 

The door behind him knocked and Lucas jumped up away from it. No longer leaning his weight on it to keep it braced shut, the door opened a crack. Rusa was on the other side, waving him in. Pulling him by the hand (hers felt slippery, felt possessive, and he didn't care for the touch right now) over to where someone was laying strapped supine on their sofa. Pushing him down to sit on the floor where she followed. 

Then she was trying to force the tubes lying limp on the sofa side, dangling from the victim's arm, into his hand. Telling him to attach them back into her, to take the others and attach them to himself, to let down the defenses that his meager implants would present against the unknown inflow of energy.

Lucas said no.

The tubes slipped away. Rusa took hold of them again and directed them towards him once more.

 _You want to know how I do it, don't you?_ she'd pressed. Too close, really. Too close, too insistent. Lucas felt slippery tubing pressed into his hand. Felt the presence of her grin right there and had, in one moment, a hard time associating _her_ with the show of teeth and flaring eyes and the hunger pressing against firewalls in an inhuman way that was all in combination enough to make this person seem anything but an _it._

The Axai didn't give back humans the way they took them. 

And Lucas had been dense to not consider the danger beyond the adventure of this all. 

He did as she wished that night but the way she stroked his head afterwards, mouth quirking, eyes have hooded, made him feel more bitterly annoyed than see her as attractive.

* * *

One time, Eyler had called him in for a visit. Asked, midway through casual conversation, _'You're rather close to Wilson, aren't you?'_

And Lucas hadn't known whether saying yes or no would be more dangerous. In the end, the delay was problematic enough. Worry built up and words built up right right alongside it, ready to spill out and appease his boss.

Eyler had interrupted the process by laughing. He leaned back against the furs behind him comfortably enough and waved off any need for Lucas to answer.

Afterwards, he'd wondered on the question. Without the need to consider what Eyler wanted or didn't want to hear, Lucas tried to find his own genuine reply to tell himself.

He wasn't sure he found one.

Rusa was nice, friendly, sad, pretty; Rusa looked at him once and threatened to keep him chained in her basement if he ever once said he was going to tell others about her blood thieving.

He thought...

Maybe once, he thought he felt close and liked that growing proximity. Liked the small danger of being near someone who had capabilities unknown from the Axai. Thought that her attention was nice.

Currently, he didn't much like her.

* * *

Lucas had rushed to her house after the day that he'd awoken to running for his bathroom before vomiting. His head had felt overloud. A noise split his mind from one ear to the other, ringing, screeching, white noise. He hadn't been able to see straight. The eyes themselves felt far too dry. 

At first, he'd tried to sit down and let it pass. Considered finding a nurse for advice, a medicine for the headache and perhaps for his stomach as if this were a flu. 

But the metal on his temples was fritzing. There was cold sweat on the back of his neck. Something unknown was pinging him and the call came from his own implants. There were errors, far too many errors. He felt like he needed something to pick him up and the only thoughts of such a remedy were other people rather than medicines or spells of any kind. 

When he reached her house and spilled this out in panic, Rusa had looked at him calmly and said: "That's right."

The right symptoms. The right need. The wrong implants, granted, but his still knew when they were running low on energy no matter if they hadn't originally been intended to work off such energy to start with. 

Lucas had felt sick again.

And more than that, he felt confused.

"The Axai had to-had to put you in a lab for this, you said, didn't you say? I don't understand how I'm- how I could be doing this if they've never once touched me-"

But Rusa understood. And she was kind enough to explain it. To poke at where she drew his blood, where the cross contamination occurred so often. 

"How do you think I got like this?" she asked, apparently rhetorically. "They drew from me over and over until it finally....well. Here I am."

Lucas felt his own blood boil.

"You knew? I let you swap from me and you knew that doing it too often would do this to me?" 

"Yeah. Or guessed, at least," Rusa answered with a shrug.

He almost stood and lunged. Almost.

"You-" 

The spitting yell was cut off by a far too calm voice.

"And you already know how to siphon. So lookee there, seems like you're fine after all."

No. No, it had nothing to do with knowing how she did her little trick, it had to do with him needing- him having to now- It had to do with her knowing that this could happen to him if he let her slip her little wires under his skin too often. 

When instead he voiced his complaints that he didn't want to break into people's lives for this, rather than voicing his anger that she'd not offered him an informed consent for this procedure to start with, Rusa had interrupted again.

"It doesn't have to be that disruptive, believe me."

Oh? Was that right? Because it always seemed to ruin everyone when she bothered.

"But...No, I've been with you, it is-" Lucas started, only to be cut off once more.

"Because I like it disruptive," Rusa said flatly. "Never said it had to be though."

Then she was taking his shoulder and leading him to the couch to lay down and giving food, water, none of it asked beforehand if he wanted any. Her hand on him felt good, it always did technically speaking. Lucas felt like grimacing at it. He didn't want her touching him.

Whatever trust they'd had, she'd ruined it, knew she had, and didn't care. Thought that he'd be there for her regardless. 

Even after doing this. After upending his normal state of life.

How did one go up to someone to ask, hello, excuse me, could you spare some blood for lil old me?

It would be easier if it was just the blood aspect he needed. But it was the living aspect, the energy of life. The energy that unwittingly provided those airwaves people had just started tapping into for what they were calling magic. 

He'd have to go to Eyler. Ask for a way to get donors from him, just as Rusa had. And it would be irritating. Frustrating. It'd require new blood on a regular basis because using the same volunteers regularly would just exasperate the problem by spreading this Axai curse.

* * *

A few months later, he took the opportunity to go into Eyler's office with Rusa. The man had made some comment to him about his ditching work too often. Lucas felt the absolute need to apologize and offer excuses for it. Rusa hadn't waited for any of that to start. She saw this meeting as one for her. About her. Like everything was. 

So he waited by the side while Rusa let her false skin peel back and pulled tools free. Some of the tubes remained attached to her. Others, she pulled free completely for demonstrations' sake to show both ends and how they operated. How the catheters were attached. How the blood entered into her implants for filtration in order to siphon the energy into them. And Lucas watched from the side flatly. Waiting. Waiting until Rusa had gotten Eyler's green light for the position he wished to create- the field he wished to explore. Those capabilities opened by ancient mystics and how to marry it to the world they ruled in now. Until she was given that power she enjoyed along with the ties of responsibility she cared nothing for. It wasn't a job she deserved. She'd just ruin those under her power as a director. A position like that ought to go to someone who understood it. 

She left the room confidently and he wanted to see that confidence falter for once. For her to realize she did not actually have them all fooled and ready to obey her any whim. 

So he approached where Eyler was sitting at his desk, fur coat sleeves so large that a small portion of that desk's surface was covered in them. 

There was more intimidation now that the moment had arrived. He hoped that Eyler had agreed to his request: that he'd kept behind some of the necessary items while Rusa was distracted with the news she was getting her way, and that he'd allow Lucas to give his own plan instead. There was no saying with the man, however. He may have acted agreeable to the message, but it could have been truly disinterest hidden well or else the affability of a shoe about to drop.

"Did she leave the-erm-..."

Eyler lifted one arm until the furs no longer covered the tabletop. There, atop them, were Rusa's tools. 

He got to work. Lucas took a seat next to his boss and brushed furs up and away from the wrist that Rusa had already drawn from. There was a moment of hesitation when he wondered if it was really wise to show Eyler that he was stuck with this too. It was drowned out by how sick and tired he was of having to go with Rusa in secret on her raids just to keep himself from 'withering' as she put it. Eyler would use him now, no doubt about that. But he'd rather be used by Eyler than by Rusa and her gleeful game. He was more than sick of the _adventure_. 

There was a deep breath taken to calm nerves before he pulled his shirt up to slide the user's end of the tubing into the metal digging into his skin there. No more hiding it after that. He'd looked up, then; looked up to see how Eyler had reacted. There'd been a surprise there, though dulled. Something else too. Something that convinced Lucas to keep going. 

Already tender skin was broken once more. Eyler flinched just barely at the catheter before his eyes and attention turned upward towards his concentrated expression.

"So you can do it too," he mused.

And Lucas felt himself let go of the breath he'd been holding.

* * *

After that, they talked business. Lucas explained that he wanted the spot as division director for magic research technology rather than Rusa. That he wanted her donor line to go to him instead of her. That he wanted her to become a nonissue for them all.

"If I can speak freely, she's a liability."

Eyler had looked thoughtful throughout it all, but at that he looked almost briefly amused. 

"For the same reasons, so are you," the man pointed out.

Hardly in the same way as Rusa, though. Hardly in the way that hunted down people and tricked people and acted 'disruptive' for the sake of it and the power over another's life it gave her.

"But I'm leashed, sir," he argued. "I can't take this very easily from people who're fighting me about it. It's another resource for me. Like water for anyone. I'll behave better than she could and, as payment, I live comfortably with the resources I require.

"That leash could apply to her as well," Eyler said.

Perhaps, but-

"Yes, but I'm..."

"Less of a wildcard?" Eyler helped along.

Lucas considered it briefly but that wasn't quite convincing enough. 

"Less psychotic. I'm a businessman, that's all. That was supposed to be all."

It couldn't be now. Even if he managed to continue climbing ranks and keeping this faction running on, he'd always still have to bother with needing donations and fritzing implants and an energy he couldn't even use. 

* * *

Five years after Rusa Wilson's unsolved, unreported 'disappearance', Lucas left that division to move for an even higher branch of the faction's control. 

By seven years after what he knew dispassionately had been her death, he'd been promoted to Eyler's vice-chairman. He held that position for more years than previous lieutenants had managed. Whatever ailment he had, he didn't let it interfere with his work. Eyler wouldn't appreciate signs that it did (whether that went unsaid or not). 

He'd been stuck with the ailment for eleven years before the time someone very important entered the scene. Oh, he hardly knew she was important then. It didn't register until he was looking down one end of a viscera coated club she held and waiting to know if his life continued or not based on her choice. Hindsight was wonderfully clear that way. 

But back then, Vida Mehr had just been another newcomer. A spokesperson for a good chunk of land that Eyler wanted. (Bit of a joke, that. Eyler wanted any and all land he could take.) She'd made a deal to keep him off her territory. Came in a few months later for another. Food, supplies. Repairs for glitching implants. A liaison to the Lurun. More and more visits. More and more reasons she'd need Eyler's aide. It was funny, in a way, how it always worked with everyone. People would come to make a brief deal, a little trade, in order to fix one problem they had that felt insurmountable to deal with. In a year, they'd have moved in completely because somehow their life independent had grown so full of those insurmountable problems that they had to have constant help from Eyler just to function. There was likely a causality to that association but that reality didn't occur until too late. 

It reminded him a bit of Rusa, in its own way. Starting small, thinking there's control, thinking something is mutually beneficial, and then wondering much later how it came to the point that you were wearing the chains of another person without remembering putting them on. 

A part of him really wanted to say fuck that to the comparison. The rest of him knew well enough that there was no point in feeling angry over wearing a leash Eyler held the reigns of. At least as a lieutenant, his job was good. He only had one person to have to oblige. It was better than being small fry helpless to all forces of the world. It was better than Rusa. Eyler messed with everyone and he was hardly an exception, but he never messed with people by playing intimately the way Rusa had.

It was better still to just avoid thinking about the comparisons in full. 

Doing so did so enable hypocrisy with more ease, after all. 

Mehr shook things up from the first time she officially joined Eyler (it was so hard to avoid doing so after a few attempts at working independently with him as an ally rather than a boss; impossible, really, though people didn't seem to realize that until they'd already signed all consent over to him). She was fiery. Threw fits about the jobs Eyler was giving her. Didn't get anywhere with any of them, but it was more attempts at fighting than most any of the other contractors in that place offered. 

A few times, she even went to Lucas himself over her displeasures. The first time, she'd been angry over one of the changes he'd made to sector forty-four's policies. Lucas couldn't be bothered by most of her complaints. Those sampled and chosen from its populace to report to the bureau of medicine were quite necessary. Not just for keeping Eyler's empire ahead of other competitors, but for Lucas's own sake as well. If they found a way to undo the Axai engineering that Rusa infected him with, then he'd never have to worry about spreading it to others when needing to take blood from them. 

Mehr had, of course, not known any of that. 

If she had, she likely still would have argued against the policies. She'd been soft, at first. 

(There'd been nothing soft in how she swung that bat, how she left Eyler's corpse unrecognizable as even being human once)

She'd marched up to him, told him to take back the orders. Told him she wouldn't implement them, that her people weren't going to play some game for him.

Lucas had laughed. 

_Do you want to go to Eyler about it?_ he'd asked once finished. _Go right ahead. Really, do. Oh? You won't? Then you already know what his answer would be._

Maybe Mehr started to hate him that day. Maybe Mehr never actually hated him at all, since Eyler stole so much of her focus.

They disagreed on decisions quite often. She played the role of a mercenary, of the messenger for bad news; Eyler sent her to run errands that would put her right at the front of those distressed people his plans were ruining while he sat behind his walls totally unaffected by the lives he was destroying.

Then again, if Eyler was at the front actually telling people they were getting supplies cut or killing for examples or sabotaging food banks, Lucas didn't really think he'd be all that affected anyway. Eyler was...Well, Lucas didn't want to complain. He'd done enough of that with Rusa, hadn't he?

(in years to come, he'd admit to others that Eyler was sick, he'd admit it to himself; he'd admit that there was no flaw in noticing another's even if they held power and he relied on their good graces to have a working job. But not then, not until _after_ Eyler died, not until the world got rattled enough that he would consider anything but maintaining a stable status quo)

When he passed on orders to her to misdirect a clan that had desired to ally with Eyler straight into the wandering Fyssa Rogue's path, it seemed like Mehr was actually going to attack him. She wouldn't, of course; he was too valuable to Eyler and she was too valuable to Eyler and even without bluntly telling them such, that fact always lay overhead keeping any of Eyler's tools from destroying another. But this once, he almost felt threatened.

From behind a one-way mirror where they both stood, Mehr pointed at the spokespeople of the unfortunate group and hissed at him.

"They asked for help. You want me to kill them for that?"

Put it that way and it did sound rather bad. But that was besides the point, wasn't it? Eyler didn't care for things like morality. Who did, in this vicious world?

"They had only one advantage to offer and that's that they've got enough water to redirect to the rest of us," Lucas said, calmly. Inspecting his hand. Ignoring the rage of the shorter individual. 

There was a moment that anger bubbled, held- then Mehr deflated just slightly. It was resignation. He could recognize it in her eyes, see how her anger would just have to get ignored because she couldn't ignore an order and that's what this was, wasn't it? Causing problems for Eyler may just mean her own subordinates would be the next disposed of.

"And Eyler greenlighted this?" Mehr asked.

Funny, that.

By now, she really should know.

Lucas smirked, but it held no real mirth. Pride, superiority, yes, but it was hardly joyful.

"You shouldn't have to ask," he replied.

She didn't really, not after that. She recognized exactly how pointless it was to assume Eyler wouldn't just give orders to kill a populace because they inconvenienced him. 

She realized it so well, in fact, that she found the many enemies the man had made from that very attitude and let them arm her enough to beat Eyler down without hesitation.

The tables of power shifted in just a few seconds. 

Lucas couldn't just take shelter in the rank he held and direct any problems with his behavior to Eyler. 

It put him under far more threat from the Axai than Rusa's playing ever had. 

It led to an alliance that, for once, felt equal. Not a relationship where one lied and played without permission. Not a boss that got his way no matter how he spun it as your own choice. 

And that left Lucas with just as much to be pleased over as it had left him to inherit problems.

* * *

They sat in the back of a vehicle he technically owned. That had been his offer. He was pretty sure that Vida wasn't entirely comfortable with the fact, but she accepted. It was more than she'd have done a year before. She was prickly, on guard. Defensive. She didn't want to feel reliant on anyone.

But he had access to Eyler's old resources and this limousine was going to take them both to the Vitio System's delegate faster than if they traveled separately. That logic swayed her over. Lucas wasn't really as driven by that perk as he was just trying to get them both more situated sitting across from each other without Vida looking completely tensed up. 

She'd been the one to open up about what boundaries she had for meetings in this alliance. Handshakes, sharing tables, walking near- fine now. Anything more touchy was going to have to wait. Since his first attempts at shaking hands had ended in getting hit away and now could be done with relative ease, Lucas didn't take that as a sign of _forever_. Vida didn't either. 

Vida was open to progress, development, compromise that way. 

Open, as in, honest. Not necessarily in being free and easy with words, but her behaviors and other forms of language were as honest as they'd always been. If she was furious, she'd show it.

He'd decided to say as much, drawing her attention away from the vehicle's window and to him.

"What?" she started, apparently only tuning in to the last part of his statement.

Lucas tried again.

"I was just trying to pay a compliment. About how you've handled everything, since _it_ went down."

No need to define what 'it' was.

"That's why I kept pushing. When we'd see each other at other delegations, pushing for a real alliance. After what happened, I...Really respect what you did. And appreciate it, of course." Lucas laughed awkwardly. "Not many are upfront about holding power or blackmailing and not many actually stand back after the initial time."

Vida frowned. 

"Why the hell would you like any of that? How is someone under threat getting basic treatment worth anything?"

Ah. Well, if that was how she saw it...

But Vida had to realize, wouldn't she? After her own time with Eyler, he'd think so. Someone almost always had power over you. That was just a fact of life to accept, not one to fight.

Still-

"Because you didn't hide it," he said bluntly.

"Meaning?" she replied with equal bluntness.

It was quick.

Most natural conversations were, weren't they? It was nice to actually get a chance to have conversations with people. Most couldn't because they feared him for his own power or because they didn't care to actually hear what he'd have to say. 

"The others I've had to deal with living under the whims of all played a game of pretend," Lucas explained. "They'd never tell you outright they wanted to hurt you, that they were enjoying the power, that they'd throw your life to hell if you ever upset them somehow or if they just happened to feel like it. That was- I mean, I'd know it was there, but people like Eyler would rather act like it isn't. Makes it your choices that..."

He drifted off. Vida was still frowning, but it wasn't angry. Thoughtful, maybe. 

Maybe even guilty over the incident he'd brought up. He didn't think she should've been.

"It's still being powerless," she argued.

Yes, but- He racked his brain for the words to put this. To show he had no issues at all sitting across or next to someone who'd directed his hand once, not when she still was clear about respecting his autonomy.

"It's much more stomachable when it's not dressed up as some game. Less mentally taxing. That shit really just-" he trailed off only for a second before she filled in the blanks.

"Drains you."

"Leaves you dry."

The other crossed her arms and leaned back in her seat to stare up. She snorted, a smirk sitting in place briefly.

"Fine. Fine. It's not how I'd take it if someone did it to me, but I get your point anyway." She brought her head back down and her expression was serious again. "And for the record, I...The most I'd have done was kill you. Having you hand supplies over to me was a one time ploy. It wasn't something I was going to do again. I don't care for that sort of pressuring people."

It could have been a lie, of course. Anyone's words could be.

Lucas would rather believe it. There'd been no evidence contrary.

"You're better than it," he agreed. It earned another snort.

"Maybe. I just don't care for it. The same could be said for a whole lot more," Vida said.

Blunt. Flat. A rather fitting tone for words proclaiming apathy.

Better that than getting sadistic kicks over pressuring people, stringing them along with false hopes that this would be the last time they had to bow only to be forced to those whims again. He'd take it. He already had, weeks ago when they met on a battlefield to agree to a deal.

When the vehicle began to slow, signalling their approach to the destination and thus end of private conversation, she started up again.

"But hey- Point is, we've got a legitimate truce now. That's equal footing. Even if I did want to, I can't actually hold your arm behind your back and force anything from you. I wouldn't be here bothering to chat if it wasn't so."

Compared to his attempts to speak with her before their deal and her denials, yes. He supposed now he knew her reasoning for avoiding it back then. He may not agree that she should've been kept back by guilt, but whether or not he agreed with the sentiment...Well, it just proved what he'd said. She was better than him.

Lucas smiled thinly.

"Equal footing. I really do like the sound of that."

Who else in his life had actually cared about giving him and his feelings on a given situation any attention?

There was a first time for everything, he supposed. 

* * *

He'd been lucky to think a library was a good meeting place all that time ago. It introduced a bridge. Something to talk about. Something to share. 

Vida arrived for this meeting (his territory, but not the official capital; that place was still stained by Eyler's history and they were able to converse more freely when they met instead at one of the outskirt cities) with arms full. 

"Brought those books you wanted for you," she said while demonstrating such a statement by dumping the books themselves onto the tabletop.

It was always pretty clear she didn't share his specific interests when it came to their reading materials, but Vida never bothered to berate them. The fact that she'd still dig up what she figured (mostly by the titles; something that also meant her supplied books were varied in quality and subject and some would never have been the type he'd have noticed on a shelf himself) would be to his tastes without comment spoke enough of respect. 

She enjoyed the company of books, if just for being surrounded by the peace of shelves of undestroyed knowledge. History and literature, surviving the harsh setting of the world. But she read little outside of the factuality of history and the surreal of fiction.

 _If I'm going to read for that sake, I'd rather it be some escapism,_ she'd put it at one visited library. 

A moment later, she'd leveled a sharp look on him. _Then again, maybe that philosophy jumble is supposed to be the same. Offer something that glimmers and say it_ is _our world in escape from the shit of reality._

A clever thought, but she still didn't grasp it fully. Reading a work of fiction meant understanding that work would never be real. Looking at theories on reality itself meant the possibility that they were, in fact, what was there behind the curtain. A desperately intriguing thought to him, a moot one to Vida. She went to these libraries out of her own interest. Got her own perks from it. And still said on questioning that she didn't really do so without an invite to meet up at one such library. Too busy with her own business, too exhausted when given the free time to try. She'd show up for him.

He would have said a thank you, for coming because of an invite to meet, for chatting instead of silence or anger, for bothering to hold a conversation about subjects she didn't know or care much about. Would have said a thanks for doing so, however much with caution, before they'd had a truce. But he had a pretty strong hunch Vida would go stony at the idea of his gratitude. He never brought it up verbally. 

The thoughts got shaken away to focus back on the present. The other leader was looking more closely at the table she'd dropped her gifts onto. At the cutlery present. The quality of food laid out on plates. At the clear attempt to impress.

"Fancy," Vida said dryly. One eyebrow had lifted sharply.

She took the seat regardless of the comment.

He took his own, across the small table, and let the atmosphere ease. She rather liked sitting across like this. No side by side. No one over the other. 

Considering how Rusa had abused the former and Eyler so strongly the latter, he rather thought he could agree with the sentiment.

* * *

Eventually, one day, he'd let a sleeve get too pulled up when reaching for a drink in an upper cabinet. It was a little careless, but, maybe...just maybe, he could care less about whether people he trusted saw what he protected under long sleeves for years now. 

Vida had taken note too quickly for him to just put it away, in any case. 

Too late now, he supposed, and allowed her a good look at his forearm while his other hand pulled the sleeves back when she'd asked to see. 

_Never seen implants like that_ , she'd just ended up saying.

Not prying to know what they were. Just a statement. Maybe a curious one, maybe just matter of fact.

Lucas wondered what it'd be like to have someone other than his doctors and engineers know why he needed the labs for Axai research as much as he did. 

* * *

She hadn't pried and maybe that was why he'd ended up sharing unprompted a different time. He poked at the holes in his arm, brought out the tubing, showed off the things built into his arm to keep him functioning with Axai magic messing up his system. 

Vida wasn't pleased over the labs, but she didn't get angry either. She'd lost a few of her people to those departments when working for Eyler. The former boss had been interested in learning about what energy and magic they could discover outside of telepathy or psychic spellcasting and everyone who joined him had lost a few to those laboratories. 

She was, however, interested in how he was uneasy in letting people touch the implants for too long.

 _I don't want to spread it,_ he explained generally enough. _There's no hard and fasts on how much exposure it takes for it to contaminate another._

Which just left her wondering how many options their research had actually been aiding him. How many people he drew from when he needed new energy and how fast that rotation ran out of donors. How it worked at all.

Well, at least one of those questions was easy to answer.

"You ever have a blood draw?" Lucas asked as he slid one tube back into its casing. 

The look he earned almost made him laugh.

"Really?" Vida's voice was incredibly unimpressed. "Yes. Everyone takes one before Eyler lets you work for him. Weeds out those with problems visible from those tests or at least gives him a bargaining tool to blackmail them with. You do that too?"

Ah. No. He was rather making an effort to be different from Eyler.

"Not the blackmail. And I tend to stay away from any center doing anything with blood unless I've got a donor and privacy ready," he answered. 

It seemed that she wasn't actually waiting for him to deny the implication or not. She started up again.

"Rena used to take ours. Former paramedic, before the Vitio collapsed her organization."

He'd been meeting, slowly and cautiously, her inner circle since the truce. It was partially to put them at ease. One of them acted like a hissing cat when he was around and got within ten feet of Vida or the others. Even if the sharpshooter denied doing so the one time Lucas had privately called them out on it, he knew that one, Vol, was tense and nervous at his presence. It was taking work to get any of that group to stop staring at him as though they wanted to eviscerate him with glare alone. It took work to get Vida to accept he was genuinely trying to have a truce too. It'd be worth it.

In those meetings, he didn't remember a Rena. He'd met the spellcaster Parker (and almost gotten murdered by said spellcaster when he'd ran across his young son in a hall accidentally), he'd met Vol, he'd met the top officials, but he didn't recall this one. Still, he supposed, it was a bit much for him to expect to recognize names of people that didn't really matter to him.

"Rena is-"

"Friend," she interrupted. "Former. She's not going to help you with this, believe me."

Help? He hadn't remembered even asking for her team to help him with his contamination. 

"Ah," Lucas said with all eloquence.

Vida sighed, seemingly shaken by the name of this once-friend and ready to move back onto less painful grounds.

"Anyway, want to tell me the relevancy of your little line of questioning?"

"It'll be like one. A little faster, I can't take as much as those putting them in vials will, but the process is similar enough," he explained. 

Curiosity satisfied. 

"You just need one or two donors then?"

Or not. 

Lucas shook his head. 

"I can't just use the same blood. Taking from the same person runs the risk of infecting them too. That was how I- yes. I just don't want to do that to someone else."

Not just for the sake of how dirty it felt to do what Rusa had done to him, but because logistically, spreading this to another would likely mean they'd spread it to more, and exponentially that was just going to lead to more and more people that needed uncontaminated donors from a pool shrinking with every new contaminated individual. 

Vida stood up from the couch she'd been inspecting his implants from and stretched. 

"Alright," she said.

Which was rather short. 'Alright' what?

Lucas leaned back against the leather padding and asked as much.

"I wouldn't mind offering some, if you're ever going to start melting, or whatever it is that'll happen, on me. But sounds like that's out of the picture. But if you ever did want to involve anyone else in this, I could try to get Parker to come look this implant over. He's my best spellcaster," she explained, "-with or without implants."

But...

Lucas laughed from where he was laying. It wasn't bitter, wasn't sarcastic, wasn't anything except genuinely happy. 

"Actually, Mehr, I really appreciate that. I'm not used to people that I haven't explicitly hired for this job not running away disturbed to hear about any of this."

It shouldn't have been that shocking. Vida didn't seem to get easily disturbed by much. Not these days, at least. Not after the first few years under Eyler. 

"I can ask Vol to talk to Parker about it then," she offered. 

"Why?"

"They're rather close to him. Parker hasn't been as open with me in the last year. Too busy."

He laughed again.

"No, no, I was asking why you're getting involved at all," Lucas clarified after he'd finished chuckling. "It's not as if I don't have my own on this."

Or Eyler's own on it, in any case, but it was his now. So much was. Vida had roped him into more responsibility than he'd imagined he'd be able to take that first day he'd betrayed Rusa to take her rank.

"A truce tends to be as strong as its components," the other started up, still moving from the lounge to stretch cramped muscles and get space (she had the habit of cutting meetings short, but it was better she come at all; he'd gotten used to her abruptly leaving, could understand it even). "We're making this thing work. If that means keeping you in tip top shape, I'm going to offer what I can to do so. Really-" Vida smirked over her shoulder "-I think you and I are invested enough that putting stake in your comfort wouldn't surprise you."

Lucas thought of books shared, respectful conversations; times he wanted nothing more than a casual meeting, times that she actually did oblige rather than avoiding anything that didn't have a political purpose. 

Thought of the last year and a half, from the day Eyler died to the current, and decided he believed her. 

He'd only been trying to convince her of the same for the last year, after all, so what was hard to believe about her deciding the same?

She stopped by the door and looked back at him again.

"And go ahead and drop the 'Mehr' bit. I don't mind Vida."

He thought of her anger when he'd tried to address her with that, with the familiarity a first name implied, when he was bleeding from his arm and she held life in her hands; thought instead of how confidently she'd instead taken his hand after that battle, how much that remaining upset at Eyler no longer directed itself towards him.

Thought of everything his partner in this truce had once minded and avoided and smiled, now, at the thought that she was saying she did not any more.

Thought of bridges built and offers offered and all the distance crossed without vocal words spoken.

And all the more made when communication had been laid down.

People like Rusa, people like Eyler, they listened only when it suited them, when it gave them ammunition and power. Lucas was more than ready to see if he could accomplish more doing what they hadn't bothered to.


End file.
